


Waste Paper Tower

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abduction, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, heights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:16:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: In theory, Artefact Storage is the safest place in the Institute.





	Waste Paper Tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



In theory, Artefact Storage is the safest place in the Institute. Maybe not for its employees – Martin’s sure they must have a horrible time of it, having to study the objects (Sasha had hated it, unless she hadn’t and that had been the monster that had stolen her) – but for visitors, with no contractual obligation to actually interact with anything in there. Its staff might not know as much as they do in the Archives, but they work with the artefacts. They know what they do, and how to contain them, and that’s enough.

Martin had heard, once, that one of the librarians had left a pen there – a proper fountain pen, an expensive one with an engraved nib – and come back for it only to find it logged and undergoing testing. It had taken them a full week to get it back, because the Artefact Storage staff needed to be _sure_. They’ve never assumed that anything wasn’t dangerous. They’re _careful_. They’ve got airtight doors and locks and alarms, and barring one axe-wielding Head Archivist, it’s been a long time since they’ve had an incident with an artefact.

Martin feels about as safe in Artefact Storage as he does anywhere.

He goes there, maybe more than he needs to. Not on a whim, isn’t friendly enough with any of the staff to sell that – the rest of the Institute employees tend to be a little colder towards the Archives, though whether that’s because they’ve gained themselves a reputation or because they know somehow who’s going to bring the monsters down on them in the end, Martin can’t tell – but he does go up to check whether things from the statements have turned up more than he needs to. He’s not sure if it’s for the company or just to be amongst people who seem to have a firmer idea of what to do than he does.

It’s busy, the day he heads up there for statement 0092008. Sonja and her assistants push through the doors into the last set of corridor, clustered around a trolley like carp at feeding time, making notes and taking measurement. Martin, waiting for someone to come back and let him in, has to press himself into the wall trying to get out of the way.

Sonja catches his eye as she passes, and hangs back, scribbling a few last things on her clipboard.

“Hi,” Martin says. “New intake?”

“Yeah.” Sonja gives him a brief smile, and looks back down at her papers. “There should be a statement to go with it, but given how busy your boss is, I think Rosie just took it with one of the forms. Not a long one. It should be somewhere in your in-tray.”

“Sure,” Martin says. “Thanks.” He glances around, just as the cluster of assistants parts, slightly, and he catches sight of the artefact – a plain metal cylinder, open at the top, slightly discoloured, as though from age. “Is… is that a bin?”

“Looks like it,” Sonja says, dropping the clipboard down so that it’s held against her stomach. “Not the most exciting thing we’ve ever had – apparently it causes dizziness. Just got to get it booked in, take some photos, add it to the database, and see if there’s anything to it.”

“Should I come back later?”

Sonja casts her staff a glance, as though checking they’ve got everything in hand – it looks it to Martin. They’re working efficiently, one of them carefully undoing the straps holding the bin against the trolley, to keep the surface clear for photography.

“They should be all right for the minute,” she says. “What can I help you with?”

“I was doing some research on the statement of Adonis Biros,” Martin says, looking down at his notes, though he doesn’t need to. “0092008. Some fresh follow-up before I record it. It says some stuff about Greek theatre masks – I know you’ve got some masks somewhere, and I wondered if they might be the ones.”

“Oh,” Sonja says. “Yeah, I can show you round the masks, but I’m afraid they’ve got some slightly different safety guidelines that I’ll have to get you to read through.”

“That’s fine,” Martin says. “Do you know if any of them are–”

There’s a violent crash from further up the corridor, but Martin barely notices it – something hits his head like a breaking wave, and suddenly there’s not an up anymore. He goes down sideways, vaguely aware of Sonja grabbing at the wall on her way to join him. Even from the floor, the world spins so violently that he wonders for a moment if it’s trying to pull itself inside out. The light fixtures in the ceiling waver, impossibly distant.

Martin screws his eyes tightly shut, but the sensations don’t go with his vision – his brain seems to swim in his skull, synapses pressed and pulled at. He can’t raise his head, can’t get up, can hardly breathe. He knows he needs to leave, needs to get away from Artefact Storage, but he has no chance of that.

Something cold touches his forehead, and rests there. It lies frigid against his skin, as frigid as if it’s been left out overnight in winter, burning with it, and he can’t move away. Just lies there, and waits for the vertigo to recede.

Eventually, it passes him enough to notice how quiet it is, and he dares to open his eyes.

The bin is right in front of his face, and his stomach lurches hard as he looks into it. It’s deep, deep enough that he could fall into it and never stop, and there’s another twist of vertigo through his head.

He wrenches away from it so hard that his head cracks into the skirting board behind him, and he swears, scrabbling up into a sitting position. The bin’s only a few inches deep again, rolling a little in his wake.

A glance around shows him the others starting to gather themselves, too – one of Sonja’s assistants is climbing off the trolley as though he’d fallen into it, rubbing at his elbow, whole another one pulls it back into its wheels. Sonja herself is sitting across from Martin, steadying her own breathing.

The moment she notices him looking, she pushes herself back up onto her feet, tucking her clipboard back under her arm.

“Right,” she calls, pulling a pair of disposable gloves from her pocket. “Is everyone all right?”

Her staff mumble their confirmations, and Martin nods along with them, though the motion pushes new flowers of pain through the back of his head.

Sonja gingerly leans down and pokes at the bin. It wobbles some more, but, though Martin braces himself against the wall, there’s no more dizziness. She nods to herself, and picks it up, calling for the others to bring the trolley over.

Martin watches her go, and moves tentatively to stand himself. After a moment of being upright with no issues, he starts to rub at his forehead, trying to clear the cold sensation, and gives a couple of loose, experimental coughs in an attempt to ease his chest.

“Sorry about that, Martin.” Sonja’s back in front of him again, her assistants reaffixing the bin to the trolley behind her. “Occupational hazard. You’re all right?”

“Fine,” Martin says. He takes a step away from the wall in an effort to prove it, and tells himself he’s sure that the slight hint of wavering in his head is just his imagination. “It’s not a good time – I can come back later.”

“You’ll have to fill out an after-incident report,” Sonja tells him, an apologetic frown taking up residence on her face. “It’s standard procedure, I’m afraid. I can get you a preliminary one by lunchtime, once we’ve got the artefact logged in, and there’ll have to be a follow-up in a couple of days. I’m afraid you won’t be able to see your masks for another week – best not to risk another incident so soon after this one.”

“Sure,” Martin says. “I’ll call back then, then.” It’s not as if he’s in any great rush to record the statement – working mostly on his own, the rest of the research could probably take that long anyway.

Sonja nods, and then turns back to her assistants, all professionalism. Everything under control, here.

Martin rubs at his forehead again, tells himself his skin is back to its normal temperature, and turns back towards the Archives. He does his best not to notice that he keeps as close to the wall as he can for the whole journey.

* * *

The trees reach higher than Martin would ever have thought possible. Maybe that’s a fault of his, lacking experience and imagination – he’s never been to America to see the California redwoods, the closest he’s ever got documentaries where the cameras had tilted and panned and wide-angled and still not been able to fit the whole of them in, but he thinks these would dwarf even those. They should blot out everything else, should make the forest floor feel enclosed, should trap him, but instead all he can do is try not to think too hard about the size of a world that could fit these in it.

He doesn’t look up – tells himself that he’s checking to make sure he doesn’t trip over any roots, that as smooth as the ground seems to be, the carpet of pine needles might be hiding any number of hazards, so he can’t be too careful, but he knows he’s not being honest with himself. He doesn’t _want_ to look up, because if he does he’ll tip his head back to try and see the canopy, and give himself vertigo.

There’s no point looking for birds anyway – the place should be teeming with them, treecreepers or woodpeckers or crested tits or whatever else lives in pine forest, copper-streak squirrels chasing each other around the trunks, chattering like faulty machinery – but instead there’s a quiet and hush to the whole thing that makes Martin feel like an ant wandering someone else’s cathedral. Nothing else has dared desecrate it, and he can only hope that the gods to whom it belongs will find him far beneath his notice.

He keeps walking, and walking – he shouldn’t stop, not here – and his feet do not ache, and despite the lack of a path, they seem to know the way.

The forest goes on, and on, and Martin goes with it, half hopes that there will be no end to it, dreads that if it does, there will be nothing to stop him from knowing the true height of the sky.

* * *

“You understand why this is necessary?”

Martin nods. Of course he understands – would have even before, when the sum total of his brushes of the supernatural had been through other people’s statements – but Sonja is as thorough as ever. She’d taken the seat on the other side of his desk, after examining it for slightly too long, like a kid checking for chewing gum, and had settled her notepad on her lap, rather than bother trying to move his debris out of her way.

It’s out of Martin’s sight, and he wishes it weren’t. It’s just another way to feel scrutinised, and while that’s not unusual for the Archives, Sonja’s flavour of it is different – he can’t help but feel that she’s assessing them professionally, as a department, and finding them wanting.

That wouldn’t, he supposes, be unreasonable.

“The others have been all right?” Martin asks, just to hear something other than the tracking of Sonja’s biro against her page.

She gives him a hard glance, and keeps writing.

“I know,” Martin says. “It might affect my answers.”

“Yeah.” Sonja clicks her pen, up where he can see it, her elbow moving to rest on the edge of his desk. “We’re going to have to do the self-evaluation, I’ve got some other questions that I’m supposed to be putting to people around you, but…”

“Sure,” Martin says.

“Have you been experiencing any continuing effects from the incident?”

“No.” The pen disappears from Martin’s field of vision again, and he struggles not to crane his neck after it. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Right.” Sonja scribbles something, and then flips the paper over. “Any dizziness? Falls? Moments where you lost track of direction, loss of balance?”

“No,” Martin says. “Nothing more than usual.”

Sonja turns the page again. Her booklet seems far too long – Martin supposes there must be a large blank box for her to fill in anything that her interviewee had been suffering, something she’s having to skip past.

“Have you told anyone about what happened?” she asks.

“No.”

“And why is that?”

Martin hesitates – Sonja clicks her pen off and on again a few times, as though she’s not quite comfortable with what she’s had to ask. Maybe she thinks he’s about to spill all of the Archives’ dirty secrets to her and then she’ll feel obliged to be sympathetic.

“There’s not really anyone to talk _to_ about it,” he says, finally. “Jon’s in China. Tim’s avoiding me, Melanie’s been quiet lately, and Basira… has other things on her mind. And outside of this place, who am I really going to talk to about a magic bin that causes dizziness?”

Sonja nods, and notes something down. Martin tries not to be bothered by it, to remember that she’s probably heard far worse from Tim lately, to instead wonder if she’s going to input the answers in a database and recycle the paper, or just file it.

“Any trouble sleeping?”

Martin freezes. He doesn’t mean to, hadn’t not been expecting the question, but the moment Sonja asks it, there’s a flash in his head of that forest, rising far beyond him and Sonja and the Institute.

“No… no more than is to be expected,” he says, falteringly.

Sonja frowns, slightly, and looks back up at him for a long moment. It stretches, and stretches, and an unpleasant thread of nausea starts to pick through Martin’s stomach.

“Any changes in the issues sleeping?” she tries.

“No,” Martin lies. It comes out smoothly, despite everything – he’s had a lot of practice lying to people who are filling in forms. Lies, because he can’t wish the forest away with any honesty. The old dreams had been worse – the worms, the thing that hadn’t been Sasha, the corridors, losing Jon and Tim and everyone else, visiting his mother in hospital, the crunch of metal against bone. The forest isn’t nice. It isn’t peaceful, just has no life to it where it should have been. But it isn’t targeted to hurt him, either, just a great soaring indifference, that he can finally breathe among. “Just the same as ever.”

“Right,” Sonja says. She pauses for what feels to Martin like half a minute, tapping her fingers against her pen. “How’s your diet?”

“No changes there either.”

“Exercise?”

“Sometimes I carry boxes of files up stairs.” _And sometimes I run away from monsters._

“Have you found yourself losing things? Misplacing them, at all?”

“No.” Nothing new since Artefact Storage, anyway. And it’s not as if he can’t remember exactly how he lost them, not as if Sonja would want to know or be able to fix it.

Sonja writes one last thing down, and then closes her notebook with a rush of paper.

“Thanks for that,” she says. “Wish they were all as quick as you.”

“We’re done?” Martin prompts. “Nothing wrong with me?”

“Nothing more than usual.” Sonja’s smile takes the sting out of her words.

“And the others?”

“Nothing from this,” Sonja says. “Paul’s been experiencing a bit of dizziness but he just picked up a new pair of glasses, so I’m inclined to put it down to that. We’ve not had any more real incidents with the artefact – the people who owned it reported sensations of falling, but a bit more low-level than what we experienced. One of their parents has a balance issue, and they were worried it might exacerbate it – of course, all this is in the statement, have you not had a chance to read it?”

“Not yet.” Martin shrugs. “With everyone so busy… it’s been all I can do to keep this place ending up like it did when Gertrude had finished with it.”

“Well.” Sonja stands, tucking her notepad under her arm. “If you want a transfer, Artefact Storage can always do with new blood.”

“Is that your recruitment slogan?” Martin says. “Had many new hires have you, lately?”

Sonja snorts, but doesn’t reply – Martin supposes that she can’t really respond to it, in kind. He doesn’t want to hear _not as many as you_ and she wouldn’t want to say it.

“Bye, then,” she says. “I’ll send you over the paperwork to get a look at those masks in a few days.”

“Thanks.” Martin stays sitting – Sonja knows her way out, and would probably raise her eyebrows at an escort.

“Oh, and please do let me know if you experience any more… delayed reactions to the artefact,” Sonja says. “It’s not uncommon for things to develop later on – we should really have another check-in after a month but apparently the budget doesn’t really allow for it. But I don’t want you thinking that it’s too late to come to me for help.”

“Sure,” Martin says.

She nods, and smiles, and leaves, and he leans down without looking and locks the cupboard he’d left the statement in, so that no one, himself included would see it.

* * *

Martin leaves the woods behind, eventually. It’s not his choice, but there’s no stopping, no turning back. He steps from beneath the shadow of the pines, muted by the dull weather, and even staring stubbornly ahead, the extent of the sky aches in his chest, his eyes stinging at the idea of trying to look at it.

There’s a path, now, arcing out towards a distant village. The buildings there seem as silent as the forest, no children darting about it like whirligig beetles, no bright flapping washing lines, no peal from the church bell, though he’s sure he walks for more than an hour. Martin hopes it’s just that he can’t see anything from this far away, but his hopes are often an exercise in futility.

To the left of the path, the land is scrubby – a small collection of overgrowing fields and tumbling dry stone walls – and to the right, the world drops away, off the edge of a cliff. Over, below, Martin can pick out sewing-thread rivers, sand-grain houses, places that should have their own stories and struggles, scaled down by the landscape.

The breeze picks up, as he goes further, until it’s a wind that seems unable to make up its mind whether it wants to push him back to safety, or fling him off the edge. It catches in his clothes, hauling him this way and that, and Martin struggles to keep his footing, the rocks in the path made slippery by generations of feet. Small stones skitter out and over and are lost.

For just a moment, Martin wants to jump. The wind is cold, clean against his skin and in his lungs, and he can imagine how it would rush past him, how much better he would feel, moving too fast for everything in his head to catch up with him. It’s so far down that maybe he could just fall forever, fear and exhilaration and endless freedom from everything that ties him to the Archives like stakes in the ground.

Instead, he keeps walking, one careful foot after the other. Off the edge, and he’ll never reach the village. That’s surely where he’s supposed to be going – he wants to know what will happen when he gets there. Not like Jon would, always careering towards the next thing to learn with no regard for anything else, but he still has some curiosity.

The wind tugs at him, as though trying to convince him that he would be better, if he just went with it, and he dares to turn his head and look out over the world, a tableau of green and grey. At the edge of the horizon, there are clouds. Then he keeps going, leaving the wind to chase itself in circles in his wake.

* * *

Not for the first time, Martin startles awake to a heavy, thumping rhythm, flinching back to consciousness so hard he nearly falls. For one confused instant, he’s back there – alone in his flat in the dark, Jane Prentiss hammering at the door, lying awake, staring at the ceiling through eyes stinging with exhaustion and wondering where Jon and Tim and Sasha are.

But Jane Prentiss is dead and a long time ago, her ashes gathering dust in Jon’s desk drawer. Martin almost wishes, sometimes, that she wasn’t, because at least when it had been Jane Prentiss, it had _only_ been Jane Prentiss. No corridors and no mannequins and Elias just another vaguely absent bureaucrat. And maybe it had all been illusion, but it had been simpler. Jon had recorded and poured scorn and they had researched and no one had been off chasing apocalypses across the world.

Then, as he loses his balance, he remembers the village and the cliff and throws himself left, half-convinced that he’s about to plummet over the edge, but instead he cracks his shoulder into brickwork, and knocks himself back to full wakefulness.

He’s standing in the hallway of his building, still on his floor, but almost to the lift, the texture of the carpet uncomfortable against his bare feet. The noise that had woken him was a neighbour’s music, blaring out from behind their door as though they think their taste is good enough that everyone should get to experience it.

It’s not right. For all that Jon seems perfectly able to just sleep sitting at his desk now, Martin had never been able to drift off upright, not until Prentiss. And even then, it was only after something like that, that made him weary down to his bones. Not after a day of nothing more than filing and research.

He’s certainly never sleepwalked before.

Ahead of him, the neighbour’s door opens, and he automatically turns away, trying to make himself less obtrusive. His pyjamas aren’t exactly indecent, but he hardly wants to encounter other people in them. He hurries back to his own flat, vaguely aware of his neighbour wishing someone a good night – some sort of party, then.

His door isn’t locked, but he doubts that whatever his sleeping self had been concerned with, it hadn’t been the security of his possessions. The key’s still sticking out on the other side, so he turns it behind him, and sets about making himself some tea.

It’s barely eleven o’clock. He’d decided on an early night, before – had been tired, as though he hadn’t properly slept in days. At work, he’d read the same paragraph of his statement six times before he’d noticed, half his mind on whether Sonja might bend the rules and let him in to look at the masks just a little bit early.

Maybe that’s it – maybe it’s just the stress. He’s had enough of Adonis Biros’ trauma. Jon’s supposed to be coming back from America soon, but Martin’s heard nothing from him for far too long, even though their messaging these days is always brief and full of awkward pauses, because Jon doesn’t know what to say to him, too busy trying to save the world to have answers for that, and Martin doesn’t know what to say back.

Tea made, he flicks the television on and settles onto the sofa, head too dull to properly worry about what had happened. He finds himself a vaguely familiar nature documentary that he can stare at without really watching, and picks up his phone from the arm of the chair. He holds it for a long moment before he remembers that Sasha’s dead, Tim hates him, and he doesn’t know Melanie or Basira well enough, which is probably his own fault.

He puts the phone decidedly back where he’d found it, the screen facing down so that he won’t be able to see that there aren’t any notifications, and forces himself back to the documentary. It’s something about the wildebeest migration, the most dangerous part of it – the river crossing, where the herd must brave the crocodiles. But as the animals approach the edge, the playback speed’s dragged down, to make sure that the viewer can see every drop of water fly, and the narrator pauses, to allow the dramatic score to take its full effect.

Martin can’t focus on it, and there’s nothing to do but drift.

* * *

His memories of the village exist only to be filled with the spire. He doesn’t remember it, in the view from the edge of the woods, but as he had got closer, it had risen, and held his attention completely. He had walked through the streets towards it with no regard for anything else, moving like a moth to a flame to the door, already open for him. Inside, the stairs spiralled up, and up, and Martin had begun his ascent.

The steps are stone, worn and dipped from use, as though there had once been lines of people travelling them. Martin wonders, distantly, if perhaps they would have come to pray up here, if this might have been more sacred a site than the church – Tim would have known better, but Martin can’t see why anyone would have built something like this except for some kind of ritual – but too much of him only cares for the climb for a conclusion.

He doesn’t hurry, though his throat aches with the need to get higher, up and out, even though the walls don’t try to crush him. Part of him thinks that he should get out of breath, even at his own, steady pace, that he should run out of steam, muscles aching, and flatten himself against the wall, gesture for any other tourists to pass him. He remembers doing that, faintly, from when he was younger, the cold stone a welcome relief against the heat of his skin.

He doesn’t feel like a tourist, here. More like he’s always known this place, never left it. Like he belongs.

When the stairs finally open out at the top, it’s darker – there’s a deep grey cast to the sky, mottled all over with clouds like bruises. Martin should turn, head back down the staircase, try to find shelter, it can’t be safe, up here, but instead he just walks out towards the edge. There’s a short wall there, about waist height, that he doubts would really stop anyone from falling.

The rain starts as if it’s been waiting for him. He closes his eyes for a long moment, turning his face up, letting the downpour strike at him. It’s only a matter of seconds before he’s soaked through, and then he just stands there, sodden, breathing in the air as the storm clears it, and listening to the water drum against the stonework.

With the first roll of thunder, so deep that it almost seems to shake the tower, Martin remembers that there’s a village, somewhere below. He peers down at it, and from here, he can just about discern movement in its streets. He imagines people, rushing into their homes, slamming doors and shutters against the squall. It must look endless, from down there, like the whole world will be storm forever, and the rain will fall until it seeps into their houses, until there’s a river where they should have been, not something that any dam would have been enough to prepare for.

The first flash of lightning is almost bright enough to wake him. It tries to span the whole sky, slicing down from the clouds to the ground in an effort to pour light and electricity across what can’t be divided, and then scorches out. Martin can smell it – ozone, sharper than the rain-on-the-playground smell that’s already sticking in his nose.

In the second strike, he thinks that, just for the barest of seconds, that there’s something out there, beyond the tower, suspended in mid-air. A bright, writhing presence that he can’t quite focus on, seen more in its afterimage, imprinted in negative on the backs of his eyelids.

Even with just that fleeting impression, it makes Martin’s head ache. He sits, settles with his back against the wall, and tilts his head back up to watch the sky as it rages.

* * *

It’s been hard to tell, lately, where dreaming is and isn’t. Neither the world where he goes to the Institute nor the one where he waits in the tower seem quite right. There are gaps, that at any other time he would put down to a brain on autopilot – just because he doesn’t remember anything between dozing off on the sofa and waking up in his own bed doesn’t mean he didn’t walk there in full command of his faculties, just the same as being unable to recall breakfast doesn’t put the cornflakes back in the box – but it’s been feeling different, lately.

He’s too tired and has too much else on his mind to worry about it. Instead he just sits at his desk and blearily reads the first line of Adonis Biros’ statement four more times before he realises that he already recorded that one. Not like it hadn’t been memorable, what with his visitor.

He hasn’t told anyone about that, just like he hasn’t told anyone about the dreams – he’d thought about going to Sonja to mention the tiredness, but at this stage he can’t tell if it’s from the incident with the bin or from everything else that’s going on, and he can hardly explain all that to her. Maybe, if he was still sleepwalking, he would’ve mentioned it – after he tried encasing his door key in a block of ice – but as far as he can tell, it’s not happening anymore.

So eventually that it’s painful, he reaches the end of the page, and reaches down to flip it over. Stops, staring down at his own hand.

His thumbnail is torn and ragged, thick black lines embedded against the quick. When he splays his hand, he can see that the others match. It looks like soil, but he doesn’t garden, and it’s a while since he’s got his hands dirty, metaphorically or otherwise. Even in his dreams, sitting at the top of that tower and letting the rain and the sky clear any of the horrors he’s been reading about, there’s been nothing to make them like that.

Frowning, Martin checks his other hand – matching, and then further up his arms, trying to narrow down when it could have happened. There’s no more mud, but his fingers do catch on a slightly irregular white mark on his wrist. He rubs at it, hoping it’ll flake off, like it’s some dried patch of laundry powder that had been caught inside his sleeve, but it doesn’t shift, even when he scratches.

Raising it a little higher, into the light, Martin can just make out the beginnings of a branching pattern, delicate fronds reaching down towards his fingers.

“Martin!”

Martin drops his arm immediately, and leans forward over the statement as though he’s studying it, hiding both hands beneath the line of his desk.

Every time Martin sees him, Jon seems to look more and more terrible. He’s still wearing what Martin thinks must be a borrowed shirt, unless Jon has a sudden new enjoyment for printed logos, but at least it’s different from the one he’d come back from America in. Some of the scars have faded a little more, but Martin can still pick them out.

He’s haggard and harried and so far from the dry, scathing man that Martin first remembers meeting in Research.

“Hi Jon,” Martin says, making an effort to normalise his smile.

“I won’t keep you,” Jon says – he never does. “I was just wondering if you’d encountered anything more in the Archives about…” he checks his notes, though Martin’s sure he remembers it all perfectly. Maybe he wants to seem less intimidating, or maybe he just doesn’t want to spend more time making eye contact than necessary. He probably feels all the conversations they didn’t and won’t have just the same as Martin does. “Adelard Dekker?”

“No,” Martin says. “Sorry. I’ve not really had a chance to look, I’ve mostly been concentrating on…” He hasn’t been concentrating on anything. He can’t, he’s too tired, can barely manage to keep himself awake even in those hushed meetings where they try to work out what they’re supposed to do about Elias, too numb with exhaustion to really properly hate that they’re having them in the tunnels, just stands there, blinking placidly at the memories of Prentiss or of trying to chase after Jon with Tim, and ending up in those damn corridors instead.

“It’s fine,” Jon says. “I’ll keep looking myself.” He hesitates, lingers just off-centre of Martin’s desk. “And… you’ve been all right?”

It’s not phrased as a question. Martin knows why, and supposes he appreciates it. Just wishes that it didn’t make him so easy to lie to.

“Yeah,” he says. Jon has bigger things on his mind, probably always will. Sometimes, so does Martin.

* * *

Martin had lost sight of the village hours ago. Its little lights had been far too dim to still show through the storm as it had descended, cloud and rain pulling close around the tower, until Martin can hardly see the opposite wall. For all that he can tell, the spiral staircase, the village, the woods and the cliff could all be gone, leaving him alone, floating there on a raft that’s no more to the sky than a bottle cap in the ocean.

He doesn’t really remember what the village had looked like. When he tries to bring the pattern of the streets to mind, all he can come up with is a generic, logical layout that he’s sure bears no resemblance to the scattered, irregular old place he’s sure it must have been.

It’s easier to recall the bright thing, though he only glimpses it once or twice each dream, and its branching, dancing form changes each time, the light finding new patterns. It never seems to get any closer, or any further, fixed in place. Taken and catalogued in the same way that Martin had once felt the things in the statements were, forever frozen with all that potential to fall.

He tries to study it, leaning out over the short wall, when the atmosphere suddenly shifts. It’s not anything tangible, no change in the direction of up or in the temperature of the air. It’s more a building charge that doesn’t seem to clear.

When he turns, there’s a man there, on top of the tower. He’s standing as though he had just ascended the steps, but Martin hadn’t heard any footfalls. He’s short, shorter than Martin, the wind ripping at his scarf and coat with a wildness to match the look on his face.

“Who are you?” the man demands, showing his teeth as he talks.

Martin, soaked through, clothes clinging to him, takes a half step back, holding up his hands to try and show that he’s no threat.

“Martin,” he says, though he knows it won’t mean anything.

“What are you doing here?” The man advances, and as he gets closer, Martin catches sight of a mark on the side of his neck, as the wind shifts his scarf. A scar, branching out over his skin, white and almost glowing in the storm-light.

“Michael Crew,” Martin blurts, as the pieces fall into place in his head. The man who had been struck by lightning, who’d stolen a book and then jumped from the spire of Chichester Cathedral. The monster that Jon had told him Daisy had buried in Epping Forest.

“How do you know me?” Michael Crew keeps coming, and Martin tries to keep moving back, but his feet hit the base of the wall, and he presses himself back into it. Nowhere for him to go now except over.

Martin opens his mouth, but the monster is within an inch of him now, glaring up into Martin’s face with an angry, pale stare, and all he can manage is the faintest of noises, that he can hardly hear above the sound of the rain and his own heart pounding in his chest. He swallows, and screws his eyes shut, waiting for the shove that’ll send him over.

There’s nothing. When he opens his eyes, Michael Crew is standing off slightly to the side, holding himself up against the wall, and some of the fury in his face seems to have snuffed itself out. Instead, he almost seems to be smiling, though Martin’s sure he must be mistaking that, a trick of the dim, shifting light.

He straightens up, when he sees Martin looking, and leans casually back into the wall as though he has no fear of falling. Martin supposes that he doesn’t – this must be his place, the heights and the storm.

“I,” Martin manages, remembering the question that he had left hanging. Can’t follow it with anything, has no idea what to say that won’t get him thrown off a building. Michael Crew gives him moment to add something, before he speaks.

“You should know, I prefer Mike,” he says.

“Oh,” Martin says. “Um. Sure? Mike.”

Mike nods, almost to himself, and then his attention drifts off, to somewhere over the edge of the tower. A moment later, there’s a crack of lightning, casting everything in a light so sharp that Martin almost winces.

When Mike doesn’t look back at him, he hesitantly pushes himself away from the rough stone of the wall, and moves a little further into the centre of the tower, away from the edge. He doesn’t doubt that Mike would still have an easy time getting him to go over, if he wanted to – Martin may not remember every detail from the statements involving him, but he remembers an acrophobe climbing a ladder up and out from Tour Montparnasse – but sometimes it’s nice to have at least an illusion of safety.

Mike doesn’t move to stop him, though Martin can feel him watching, sees his eyes flick from Martin to the top of the stairs, as though wondering if Martin might start to descend. Martin doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like an option, the idea of heading back somewhere that he can only have thought wasn’t crushingly small because he hadn’t yet felt the storm-sky.

Instead, he sits, cross-legged on the floor, facing a space slightly to Mike’s left, trying to keep him well in view without presenting any challenge. Mike just looks away from him, folding his arms and staring up into the sky as though he’s waiting for something.

* * *

Nothing feels wrong, when Martin opens his eyes. He blinks a couple of times, breathes in and out, clear air that seems to drain all the stress out of him. Fresh, in a way that, even when he opens all his windows on a breezy day, his flat never is. A part of his brain too tired for surprise just accepts that that will be because he isn’t in his flat, and the rest nods in faint acknowledgement. The white that he’s staring out at, not quite the same shade as his bedroom wall, is broken by the familiar tower blocks of the London skyline when he lowers his head.

It takes him far too long even after that for him to realise that this all might actually be a cause for concern. He’s looking down when that happens, watching people already starting to go about their commute passing like minnows on the street below, coffee cups clutched in their hands. None of them have seen him – no one is watching him, all craned neck and concern.

His feet are right at the edge of the roof, toes sticking off into space, and when Martin sees them, his stomach gives a quick, violent jump that nearly sends him toppling off. There should be an answering rush of adrenalin, urgency in his blood driving him clawing backwards, but instead, he’s left to step slowly back on his own, noting without any particular attention the dew that has collected on his pyjamas. He wonders if it’s a marker of how long he’s been here – the dream had seemed to contain hours.

Martin has never been on the roof of his flat before – if he had ever thought to imagine it, he wouldn’t have been particularly far off. It’s an unremarkable grey surface, the stairs sticking up at its centre. There’s a single herring gull perched on the top, and it gives him a baleful stare as he passes, makes a noise like sniggering in its throat.

The door swings inwards at a hesitant push, and Martin steps inside, wincing at the lock, covered in scratches, and the Staff Only sign. Maybe, he thinks, it wasn’t him, just someone else coming up to smoke or something, and he won’t have to add property damage or breaking and entering to his long list of problems.

There are no staff members waiting at the bottom of the stairs, ready to threaten him with fines and eviction, and he only meets one other person on his way back to his flat – he doesn’t recognise her, and she reacts with nothing more than a confused glance, which he pretends he hasn’t seen, in favour of keeping his head down and getting back to his own door as soon as possible.

He finds his flat unlocked again, and doesn’t bother to change that. He’ll have to leave for work soon anyway.

* * *

The feeling of being in the Archives hasn’t changed, even though whatever watches them must know that Martin is lying. Maybe it’s like Elias, and doesn’t bother to look, because why pay any attention to frightened, spineless Martin. That’s exactly what they’re going to use against him. Martin doesn’t look forward to it, apart from in the sense that he wants it to be over, wants for them to all be able to move into the future after the Unknowing together and safe and not have any of it _looming_ anymore, but at least it means that if the others have noticed something not quite right about him, they ignore it.

After all, no wonder Martin’s losing sleep, he’s going to let a monster play in his brain. No wonder he’s quiet, no wonder he doesn’t seem _happy_.

The only part that can’t be explained by Elias are the statements he spends that morning reading: Dominic Swain, Herbert Knox, and Stephen Walker. He’s searched for more, trying to find every scrap of information he can on Michael Crew, but aside from a few passing mentions in some of the other statements Jon’s already recorded, the files are still in too much of a state for him to find anything new.

He’d been half hoping, when he began his search, that one of the filing cabinets might give him vertigo, but there’s nothing.

Martin searches the Archives anyway – he barely sees the others, let alone has to lie to them about what he’s doing. He catches glimpses of Tim, a couple of times, but always too far away, skirting around the edges of the shelves, sure to keep out of conversational range. Maybe once, Martin would have called to him, asked for his help with this, but neither of them is living there anymore.

Jon’s hoping to catch him, Martin knows. Maybe Jon will have better luck.

By lunchtime, it’s all just feeling too cramped, down in the Archives. The walls seem to push in on him, filing cabinets and shelves on all sides, low underground ceilings. The air is stale, sitting unstirred like the stories they haven’t got to yet, and he can’t stand to breathe it.

He tells himself that it’s not that, not a new irrational discomfort with somewhere he’s been working for years, he just fancies something to eat that’s not on the canteen’s menu, but it’s easy enough to tell that he’s lying, when he gets out onto the street and immediately turns towards the river, knowing that that’s the most open sky he’s going to be able to find until he closes his eyes that night.

The vertigo hits before he makes it even a block away from the Institute. His legs crumple out from under him, and he would collapse to the pavement, but when he snatches out for something to support himself against, someone grabs his flailing arm, and pulls him mostly upright again. He leans into their grip, waits for his head to settle, but it doesn’t – when he tries to focus on the ground under his feet, the lines between the paving slabs are crawling like caterpillars across his vision.

“Martin, wasn’t it?”

Mike. Martin tries to wrench away, but there’s a crunching sensation behind his eyes. It’s an effort just to breathe, part of him convinced that the air shouldn’t be working like that when the gravity has gone so strange.

“I think you might have something of mine,” Mike says, his voice calm and polite, the only steady point in Martin’s world. He starts to walk, moving Martin down the street with him, away from the Institute.

“I don’t,” Martin manages, struggling to make the syllables distinct. He tries to stop, to break Mike’s grip, but he reaches out with the wrong hand.

“You’re going to come with me,” Mike says. “And we’re going to get it all sorted out.”

“I _don’t_ ,” Martin repeats, but the next wave of vertigo leaves him hanging like a ragdoll against Mike, who keeps firmly guiding him on, with a rueful smile at a frowning passer-by – Martin can just about make out her expression, warped in the window of a car, sitting in the traffic next to them.

“Bad day,” he comments, as Martin’s head lolls against his shoulder. “Relationship trouble. You know.”

He loses most of his awareness of his surroundings, after that. It’s a blur of light and colour and sound that he can’t focus on, and it doesn’t seem to resolve until they’ve been sitting on a bus for what looks, from a bleary glance at his watch, for an hour, his head resting against the wide pane of the window. He wonders, for a moment, why they’re not taking the underground, and then he remembers, and would have laughed, if he was confident enough in getting the breath back afterwards.

“It’s not far now,” Mike says, as though he’s just providing Martin directions to the nearest art gallery.

Martin had always assumed that, if he got kidnapped, it would be somewhere lonely, or so fast that no one would see, bundled into a van like Jon had been. But Mike seems perfectly at ease on the bus, leaning back into his seat, utterly confident that Martin’s not going to be able to make a break for it, which is fair enough. Martin doubts that he could stand, even when the bus is stationary.

It pulls away from its latest stop, and he closes his eyes, the spinning in his stomach and head too much when combined with the bus’ usual jostling. Sitting, he can feel the edges of his phone digging uncomfortably into him through his clothes, and can barely stifle a surge of triumph. Mike isn’t Elias – he won’t necessarily see, if Martin calls for help.

Without looking, he reaches for it, fingers numb against the lining of his pocket. He manages to just about angle it so that, when he glances down, he can see the screen, but it’s out of Mike’s sight – Mike, who’s just looking straight ahead, waiting for his stop like any other commuter.

Feeling absurdly like a student trying to text in lessons, Martin starts to slowly navigate through to his contacts list, giving each new icon half a minute just to settle long enough that he can actually make out what it is.

He doesn’t know who to message. Elias probably already knows, and wouldn’t care. Jon would, but he’d probably do something reckless without telling anyone else. He hopes that Tim would care, too, that a kidnapping message at least would get his attention, he has no idea if Tim still keeps his phone anywhere near him. Daisy almost certainly doesn’t care. Which narrows it down to Melanie or Basira.

Basira is earlier in the alphabet, and thus higher up the list, so Martin scrolls agonisingly to what he thinks might be her name, and starts trying to press at it.

There’s a hand in his field of vision, abruptly – Mike takes the phone away from him, flips it over without looking at the screen, and opens it up. He removes the battery, then hands the rest back to Martin. The whole thing happens so quickly, so simply, that for a moment all Martin can do is stare in confusion, waiting for his brain to catch up and understand why his phone is so much lighter now.

Mike says nothing, and there’s nothing for Martin to do except just put his phone back in his pocket. He tries staring out of the window, but the world is still far too blurry, and the stop-start London traffic wavers across his vision like heat-haze.

Instead, he hangs his head, and as he does, he notices that the mark on his wrist has spread a little further. It drifts, faintly, with the dizziness, crawling across his skin like a living thing.

* * *

When Mike finally allows the vertigo to lift, there are two locked doors between Martin and freedom. The way into his flat had been hazy – Martin remembers what had looked to be a nasty, significant bloodstain, just inside, but the edges had been spreading across his vision like ink in water, but he couldn’t say if they’d taken stairs or a life or if they were on the ground floor.

When the spinning finally passes, Martin finds himself on the floor where Mike had let him drop. He assumes it’s Mike’s spare room – it’s plain, a single bed and an empty bookshelf, a layer of dust over it all that makes Martin doubt it’s ever been used.

He groans and presses his hands into his eyes as it all levels out again, then pulls himself into a sitting position, tucking his knees against his chest.

Mike is standing over him, far taller than he should be from this angle.

“What’s going on?” Martin asks. He wishes for a moment that he had Jon’s abilities, that he could compel sense from the world and make it stick.

“I was at the Institute looking for the Archivist,” Mike says. He makes no effort to get on Martin’s level to speak to him. “And that hunter. They knocked me out. They shot me. They buried me. You know, I could forgive the first two, but that third…”

“Oh,” Martin’s voice feels as bleary as the rest of him, and he swallows struggling to make it stronger, put force in the lie. “Jon’s… out of the country. If you’ve taken me because of him, then it might be a while before he–”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you there,” Mike says. “Or anywhere, really.” He moves back a little, leaning against the wall, frowning slightly as he looks down at Martin. “When we met on the tower I thought maybe you were one of Simon’s sacrifices. You belonged to the Vast.” He pauses, and there’s not quite a threat in it, but he makes sure Martin feels the gap where one could be. “But there you were today, marked for the Eye.”

“I… I’m sorry?” Martin tries. He blinks, hard, in an effort to get himself to focus properly.

“The Vast’s got you, too, though,” Mike says. He’s not wearing his scarf anymore, and Martin finds himself following the line of the scar down to where it vanishes under his collar. “It feels familiar. The tower – you’ve got the book. I want it.”

“I’m sure I don’t have any book you could want,” Martin mumbles. His bookcase at home is just paperbacks, a couple of poetry anthologies he’d found in charity shops and the rest ones he’d bought new, after learning what Leitners were. Nothing among them that he expects would be of an interest to a monster.

“Hm,” Mike says. He’s clearly unconvinced, his eyes sharp as a hawk’s. It’s easier, Martin decides, to wonder about the path that the scar must take over his chest, than to meet them.

“Are you going to kill me?” Martin doesn’t mean to ask it, not really, but it’s what he wants to know, and he’s too tired not to be upfront about it.

“Probably not.” Mike considers him, assessing. “Don’t know what’s up with you. Wouldn’t want to do the wrong thing.”

“Oh.” Martin sags, his head flopping forwards. “Good.”

“I might have to introduce you to Mr Fairchild,” Mike muses. “It’s probably more his problem. But only once I’ve got what I need.” There’s the faintest twitch of dizziness through Martin’s head, and he snatches at the edge of the bed in an effort to maintain his balance. “And don’t think I’m not going to do what’s necessary to get it. I _will_ hurt you.”

Martin doesn’t have the capacity to respond – the dizziness sharpens into a vertigo that pushes harder through his head than it had done when Mike had taken him, drivers him down onto the floor, his cheek pressing at a disused carpet. Dust tickles at his nose, and he knows that he’d sneeze, but his brain is clinging too tightly to its last shreds of balance to lose them to that.

He hears, very distantly, Mike leaving the room, and locking the door again behind him.

* * *

Somewhere along the line, the storm had passed. The sky it leaves behind is a faint, tentative blue, still wound across with faint drifts of cloud that seem to be dispersing even as Martin watches. He would like to study them, watch for shapes there, but Mike is there, too. This time, he’s standing between Martin and the stairs, and while he doesn’t advance, he doesn’t move back, either.

He draws Martin’s eye like the spider in the centre of a web, and for all that his expression is mild, Martin’s sure he’s about as ready to strike.

“I really can’t help you with the book,” Martin says, eventually. His voice is faint, underwater-sounding, too long spent not using it, and too afraid Mike’s not going to like what he uses it for. “It was destroyed. Ages ago.”

Mike’s eyes narrow, ever so slightly, and Martin struggles to keep himself from babbling, pretend his hasn’t seen the threat there.

“ _Ex Altiora_ ,” he says. “From The Heights – I’ve read the statement, you stol– you _took_ it from Lion Street Books.”

“He was a slimy little man,” Mike says, with one of the first glimmerings of contempt that Martin’s heard from him. “He had no business touching something like that. He wasn’t like us.”

“… No,” Martin agrees, controlling the pitch of his voice, with effort. “But there’s a later statement, from someone who found the book in a charity shop. He sold it to Gerard Keay, and he burned it.”

“Gerard Keay,” Mike echoes, his eyes flickering away from Martin.

“He’s dead,” Martin announces.

“Hm.” If Mike’s disappointed, it doesn’t show beyond that. “You never encountered the book, then?”

“It was destroyed in…” Martin hesitates, struggling to claw the memories together. “2012, I think.”

“The books…” Mike frowns, as though he’s trying to piece something together. “They’re not just… they aren’t just paper. They’re… they’re a lot of things, including conduits, to something greater. They mostly don’t just become inert, like that. The power has to go somewhere, whether it attaches itself to the reader or has to re-manifest somewhere else.”

“Well, Gerard Keay burned it.” Martin isn’t sure what else he can offer. “It seemed like it destroyed it.”

“But you’ve been near the book,” Mike says. “You’ve read it. You wouldn’t be up here, otherwise, not unless Simon Fairchild put you here, and if he had he probably would have come and said something.” He’s striding closer, suddenly, grabbing a handful of Martin’s jumper and hauling him up before he can scramble away, turning him and pointing out, over the edge of the tower, down towards where the village is visible again, somehow even more distant than Martin remembers. “This is what the book’s about. The village, which tried to prepare for the coming monster, but when they finally realised how utterly beyond them it was, they saw there was nothing they could do but give themselves to the void.” He gestures at the distant woods, the cliffs, the tower below their feet. “All of this is from there. You’ve come into contact with the book. Unless you’re here in some sort of _observational capacity_.” 

He releases Martin’s jumper, instead gripping his jaw, tilting his head down so that he can get a better look at his eyes. Martin catches his breath, all the possible responses he’d been trying to come up with stuttering out. Mike’s touch is cool, but not so cold that he wants to flinch away. He doesn’t. He should.

“You don’t look to me like you’re that deep with Beholding,” Mike says, and then he lets go, leaves Martin standing there, as still as he can, holding his breath.

“I…” He inhales, holds it for a moment. “I can only tell you what I know, and I know that _Ex Altiora_ burned.”

“Something else, then?” Mike presses. “Maybe it’s a new manifestation, another book. Or did you ever meet this Gerard Keay? Maybe it attached itself to him, or–”

“The only thing I’ve encountered that did anything like what _Ex Altiora_ did was…” Martin blinks, hesitating as something in his brain finally settles into place. “A bin.”

“A bin.” There’s a threat in Mike’s voice now, an undercurrent in the words like a roll of thunder.

“It… it was brought into Artefact Storage,” Martin says, abandoning any attempts at controlling his pitch in order to talk as quickly as possible. “It gave people vertigo, it felt like I was falling when I looked into it. It hit me. A bit.”

“So, you’re suggesting,” Mike says, slowly. “That Vast has chosen, as the vessel for its incomprehensible power, a bin.”

“In the statement, Gerard Keay burned the book in a waste paper basket,” Martin says. “Maybe, like you said, _Ex Altiora_ attached itself to that.”

A little of the anger slides off Mike’s face, only visible in a slight slackening of his features.

“I don’t have any other explanation.” Martin shakes his head, struggling to come up with a way to convince him. “If you want to see it, I could probably get you into Artefact Storage. But you’d have to let me go.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Mike offers him a humourless smile. “I’m sure you’d like to get me in range of your hunter again, especially if she’s far gone enough to kill me permanently this time, but the next time I see her it’ll be on my terms.”

“I wasn’t thinking of…” Martin sighs, glances off sideways, to where the aching blue of the sky is cloudless again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re not going back to the Institute,” Mike says. There’s a pressure on it that Martin’s sure could crush cars, so he just nods, and settles back into his seat against the wall. He can feel Mike watching him the whole time, studying him. It’s not quite comfortable, but it doesn’t make his skin crawl in the same way that Peter Lukas’ attention had. Doesn’t feel like it’s an inch in any direction away from ending him.

“You said it hit you,” Mike says.

“Yeah.” Martin looks down at the stonework between his legs, picks at the fabric of his jeans. “In the face.”

Mike makes a faint humming sound, and nods, so slightly that it’s likely more for his own benefit than Martin’s. He sits down opposite, his fingers drumming against the floor for a minute before he stills them.

They’re an equal distance from the stairs now. It’s possible, Martin notices, that he could get to his feet and bolt away down them, escape Mike here even if he can’t when he’s awake. He could lose himself in those woods, and have his sleep to himself again.

Instead, he lifts his head, and meets Mike’s stare with his own.

* * *

Martin wakes up half-curled on the mattress in Mike's spare room, exactly where he’d gone to sleep, right down to still being on top of the covers. He hadn't liked the idea of having anything wrapped around him, here, stopping him from moving. Not when it would be all too easy for Mike to come in and change his mind about not killing him.

He sits up, slowly, rubbing at his eyes. His head doesn’t immediately spin off into vertigo, and it actually feels, for the first time since Artefact Storage, like he’s actually been asleep. He checks his hands and his feet for any sign of nocturnal wanderings, but there’s nothing.

Maybe, he thinks, with a glance towards the locked door, it’s because even his subconscious knew he couldn’t go anywhere.

He has no way of discerning the time, his phone still useless, and the only window far too high in the wall for him to see out of, unless he were to drag the bookshelf over and try climbing it, and he’s sure that Mike wouldn’t appreciate him starting to rearrange the furniture.

With nothing else to do, he lies back and waits. He doesn’t try to go back to sleep – he’d likely just end up on the tower again, and he’s not even sure if Mike would be there, if they have to be asleep at the same time to meet there.

When the door finally opens, Mike walks in already dressed. He’s not wearing his scarf yet, though, and the white lines of the Lichtenberg scar are plainly visible, a tracery that almost reminds Martin of a spider’s web.

“Tea,” he says. He moves the rest of the way into the room, and deposits a mug next to Martin’s phone on the bedside cabinet, before backing away, like Martin’s a wild animal whose trust must be gained slowly and with caution. He settles against the bookshelf, and takes a careful sip from his own cup, like he’s making a conscious effort not to pay Martin any attention, a marked change from how he’d been on the tower.

Martin picks up the mug and does as demonstrated. Mike’s put a little too much sugar in it, but if that and the boredom are the only complaints he’s got about having been kidnapped by a monster, he supposes he should be thankful.

“You seemed like you’d probably like it sweet,” Mike says.

“Thanks,” Martin says. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to correct him, and decides it’s not worth the risk. Mike seems to be making a conscious effort not to loom, and while he is watching again, now, it’s fleeting glimpses over the top of his mug, more curiosity than threat.

“I’ll bring you some food later,” he says. “There’s not really any in the house – all went a bit past it while I was dead.”

“About that,” Martin says, mostly to his tea. “How _did_ you…?”

“Not sure,” Mike says. “My best guess is that someone dug me up.” He shifts on his feet. “You never read the book.”

“No,” Martin says. “I… looked into the bin? But I doubt it’s equivalent.”

“Maybe the whole Eye thing made you more susceptible,” Mike suggests. “Reading without reading? Whatever your lot does.”

“I’m not sure I’m really…” Martin gestures vaguely with his other hand, in what’s supposed to be the direction of the Institute, only for him to realise too late that he has no idea where that is. Tim could probably have said where they were from the architecture. “That far in? I can’t just know things like Jon can.”

“The Archivist?”

“Yes.” Martin stares down into his tea, watches the surface shift. “You know, it really wasn’t his decision to kill you. Daisy was going to kill him too. It’s not his fault, so… you don’t need to avenge yourself, or anything.”

“I’ll take it into consideration,” Mike says. “But he was still rude.”

“He can be,” Martin admits. “But kidnapping isn’t the politest thing in the world, either.”

“No,” Mike agrees. “No, it isn’t, but I think I’m being rather considerate.”

Martin sighs. He supposes that arguing for Jon any further at this stage isn’t going to get him anywhere. He sips at his tea in silence for a minute, and Mike seems content to do the same. He’s nearly finished his, is having to angle the mug a lot higher to drink, and there’s an abrupt pulse of urgency behind Martin’s sternum.

“Why are you keeping me here?” he asks. “You don’t want to go to the bin, and you don’t want me to get to Jon, and I can’t give you what you want.”

“I’m not sure you’re in any position to say whether or not you can give me anything,” Mike says. “You’ve got about as much idea of what’s going on as I do.”

Martin lets out a long breath, and wonders how Jon copes with having stuff like this happen all the time.

“It’s just,” he says. “I really need to get back to the Institute, we’ve got this… I need to get back there.” Mike doesn’t need to know about the Unknowing or about Elias or about any of it. He’s not something that Martin should confide in, and not something Martin should trust or chat with. “Maybe if you told me what you wanted the book for I’d know better?”

Mike says nothing, just swallows the last of his tea, and starts towards the door again.

“So we’re just stuck together, then?” Martin pushes, trying to swallow a trapped-bird sensation in his chest at the idea of being sealed away.

“That’s not entirely my fault,” Mike says. He pulls a key out of his pocket, and brings it towards the lock. Martin watches it with all the subtlety of a cat following a laser pointer. “And I’ll be going out soon. Have to feed what feeds me, and all that. And feed you. Any allergies I should be aware of?”

“You’re going to kill someone.” His attention wrenched away from the key, Martin can’t think past a crushing sensation in his stomach at the sudden reminder of what Mike is.

“Kill is a strong word.” Mike turns the key in the lock, and glances at Martin over his shoulder. “I mostly don’t. I just… give them an opportunity to face their fear.

"Really?" Martin levels a stare at him that's bolder than he feels. "How many of them get out of it, then?"

Mike offers him a smile that doesn't take up as much room on his face as it should.

"Maybe I'll show you," he says. "The Eye likes to see, doesn't it?"

Martin is still for a moment, and then he shifts to look pointedly down into his tea. He tries not to flinch, when Mike locks the door again.

* * *

They meet at the tower again. It's getting towards evening there now, Martin thinks, the quality of the light a little different. He has no idea where to start looking for west, but when he thinks of it, he’s never really seen the sun from here. It’s a shame – he’s sure it would have been a spectacular sunset.

Mike stands a little closer this time, but he doesn’t say anything, just leans on the wall and looks out at the landscape below, or maybe just the distance to it.

"How did it go, then?" Martin asks, when he can’t stand the quiet any longer.

"Hm?"

"You said you were going to _feed your power_ ," Martin reminds him, not quite able to keep the distaste out of his voice.

"Oh." Mike shrugs, glances off into the distance as though it's not important. "Found someone who didn't like lifts."

"That... sounds like a bit of a come down?" Martin says, gesturing vaguely down at the approximate height of Tour Montparnasse, like a matchstick structure to this tower. "You made someone climb a ladder off a skyscraper. In Paris."

"And a couple of weeks ago I was dead," Mike says. He glances over at Martin as he speaks, and then away, and then straight back again, frowning. "You… learn to appreciate even the smaller things in life."

He pushes away from the wall, and starts towards Martin, moving fast and with purpose. Martin scrambles to his feet and then stops, uncertain and wavering as his brain struggles with the question of whether he should be fleeing.

Too late. He takes a step back, just as Mike’s hand darts out, and seizes his wrist. He pulls it towards him, pushing closer when Martin tries to move away, until they’re standing right at the edge. Mike is examining his arm with a close scrutiny.

“How long have you had these?” he asks, nodding towards the marks on Martin’s skin.

“I think it was a couple of days after the incident with the bin,” Martin says. “Why, what–”

Mike hums, and skims the fingers of his other hand over them – his touch almost seems to spark against Martin’s skin, and Martin’s stomach flips in a way that he can’t fool himself has anything to do with the drop behind him. He turns his hand, for a moment, so that Martin can see him comparing them to his Lichtenberg scar, and then looks up into Martin’s face, as he slowly, deliberately starts to push Martin’s sleeve further up.

The lines have spread further, unfurling up Martin’s arm almost to the inside of his elbow. Mike traces the path of the scar without looking, as though every turn it makes is significant. Every time he finds the end of a branch, Martin could swear that he can feel it go further, that it follows the veins and synapses until every part of him is a part of its electricity.

Martin can’t quite stifle a small sound in the back of his throat. He swallows, hard, tries to focus on comparing Mike’s scarring to his own, but even then he can’t concentrate on anything except the feather-light pressure of Mike’s touch against his skin, how close his face is, how easy it would be for that distance to close.

“They’re – they’re spreading,” Martin says, struggling to control a hitch in his voice. “They were just on the wrist to start with.”

Mike’s hands shift, until he’s holding Martin’s wrist with both of them, smoothing at the marks there like Martin had done, when he had first found them, but there’s more reverence in Mike’s touch than there had ever been in his. He brings Martin’s arm a little higher, like he’s trying to get a better look, and Martin’s thoughts stick like a broken record on the idea of him kissing the scars there, what the texture of his lips would be like, whether he’d keep going.

“Interesting,” Mike says, and lets Martin’s hand drop. He turns away, back towards the edge, and Martin stares after him, something in his chest aching to call him back.

* * *

When the door crashes in, it’s so loud that Martin is not only pulled from his book, he drops it. He’d been half-sitting, half-lying on the bed next to a stack of paperbacks that Mike had brought him, promising, with what Martin had thought might be a glimmer of humour, that they weren’t Leitners, but the noise startles him up onto his feet.

Daisy comes in first, snarl-faced and gun in hand, and Martin flinches back from her, pressing himself into the wall.

“Daisy, there was a _key_ –” Jon comes stumbling after her, only to stop dead, his shoulders slumping as he catches sight of Martin. Daisy’s gun points at him a moment longer before it drops.

“Martin,” he says, and he sounds about as tired as he looks. “You’re all right.”

“Where is he?” Daisy demands, sweeping around like she’s about to tear the rest of the place apart. Martin tries to move back again, and she takes a step closer, glaring at him. “Do you know where he went?”

“He went out,” Martin says, the words tumbling into each other. “I don’t know where.”

She lets out an ill-tempered growl, and stalks back out of the room. Martin blinks, struggling to readjust to a reality where she is a possibility, away from the morning where he’d woken up to find a cup of tea, still hot, waiting for him on the nightstand.

“You _are_ all right?” Jon’s moving closer. He reaches out, though whether he’s going to attempt a full hug or just touch his arm, Martin doesn’t know. Either way, he aborts the gesture before it can get more than halfway. “He didn’t hurt you?”

“No,” Martin says. He takes a step away from the wall to prove it, and there’s not even a twist of exhaustion-induced dizziness in his head. “I’m fine. Hi, Jon.”

Jon smiles, and there’s real, actual relief in it. Martin’s gut turns with something that feels like dishonesty - _Jon_ had been worried, and it had been a waste of his time, because Martin was fine. There hadn’t even been the hint of a threat from Mike for the past four days, in the dreams or in the waking world.

“We should probably be gone before he gets back,” Jon says. “Let’s get you home.”

He reaches for Martin’s arm again, but Martin tucks it around away from him, and he just seems to stop, for a long moment. The guilt tastes bitter, but Martin can’t risk him seeing the marks, his own Lichtenberg scarring. At best, he’ll assume that Mike had done something to him. At worst, Daisy isn’t far.

“Daisy will probably wait here for him,” Jon says, settling for pointing vaguely towards the door, just so that raising his arm won’t have been in vain.

Martin bites back on a flutter of panic, and manages not to ask if it’s necessary. Of course it is, of course they would think it is – Mike’s killed people, Mike had hurt Jon, and that should negate the way that it feels when Mike touches him, never casual, like each brush of his fingers means something, that he’s thought it through and still wants the contact.

He finds his phone battery left on the side in the kitchen, and that at least gives him something to be aware of other than Jon’s hovering or the crashes of Daisy searching through Mike’s things. He slots it back in, and waits through the loading screens, as Jon shepherds him out towards Mike’s door. This time, the bloodstain at the threshold is in sharp focus.

“How did you find me?” Martin asks, struggling to swallow the nausea. There are seven missed calls on his phone, five from Jon, and one apiece from Melanie and Basira.

“You were gone,” Jon says, leading him out into the hall. “So I… I asked around. A few people had seen you being walked away by a man with unusual scars.”

“Sure,” Martin says. He knows what _I asked around_ means, in the context of Jon, and he doesn’t know how to process it. He wonders if those people will come to give their statements, if Rosie will take them or if they’ll have to come and tell those stories to their subject.

“You’re _sure_ you’re all right?” Jon presses. It’s the closest Jon’s ever been to fussing over him, Martin realises, and there’s another unpleasant twinge through his insides. He wonders how Jon’s face would have held that fear, if it would have been like when Prentiss had attacked, wild and open, or carefully schooled to the edges, like it had been when he’d tried to send Martin and Tim home before Leitner had been killed, almost subsumed by the paranoia he’d been nursing like an overanxious parent. “He… it’s been days, Martin, I thought he might have killed you, after what Daisy did…”

“I don’t think I was what he was looking for,” Martin says, quietly. “I don’t really know why he took me, he was always just, very…”

“Remote?” Jon suggests.

“Maybe,” Martin says, with no idea what he had been about to fill in there. Mike _had_ been remote, sometimes. Not always.

“I…. the others will be glad to see you back,” Jon says.

Martin nods, absently, and wonders precisely which of the others he’s talking about. If he’s even talking about any of them at all, or if this is just Jon’s way of telling Martin that he’s glad he’s not dead.

He gives Martin’s arm a gentle pat, and Martin smiles back at him and wishes it felt more honest.

* * *

"Where did you _go_?"

It’s more of an outburst, then a question. Martin’s surprised at the force of it, the feeling in it.

Mike blinks at it like he’s confused, turns slowly away from where he’s standing, looking down at the little lights from the village, like he can’t quite believe what he’s heard.

“What?” he asks.

“You _know_ ,” Martin says. “You weren’t there when I woke up, and then Jon and Daisy came and got me, and you weren’t there then either.”

"I… wasn't going to stay in that flat forever," Mike says, like it should have been obvious. "You know that was where that hunter kicked my head in? Not the best of memories to have with a place."

“You _left me there_ ,” he says, his voice a little softer. His eyes cant sideways, as he realises exactly how pathetic that sounds. There’s an endless swathe of stars, out there, cold and glittering – there’s no light pollution here, nothing thrown out from the village that could even hope to touch that sky. It should be a wonder to behold, but Martin can’t seem to let it lift him.

“I knew they’d find you there,” Mike says. “They did. So, what’s the problem?”

“You just left,” Martin repeats, so quietly that he doesn’t think Mike would have been able to hear it, if it weren’t for the stillness of the night, how far they are from any other sounds.

“I was under the impression that you didn’t particularly enjoy being a prisoner," Mike says. "As you said, you didn’t know anything. Are… are you actually put out that I left without doing anything to you?” His expression hovers somewhere halfway between a frown and a smile, almost amused.

Martin hesitates, floundering. He knows he’s upset – indignant, maybe – but he can’t exactly tell where it’s come from, if it’s that Mike hadn’t kissed him or that he hadn’t said goodbye or that he hadn’t actually found out what Mike had wanted the book for in the first place.

“I just,” he manages, barely. “Felt like… there should have been a point to being kidnapped?”

Mike takes a step closer to him, and Martin forgets to take one back. Keeps forgetting, until Mike is near enough to take his arm and pull him towards the edge. He proffers Martin out towards the sky, until there’s a rush of wind against Martin’s face, cold enough that when he breathes in, it seems to freeze the blood in his veins.

“I can do something to you now, if you’d like,” Mike murmurs, close against Martin’s ear. The Lichtenberg scars seem to jolt, though whether it’s from the words themselves or just Mike’s proximity, Martin wouldn’t care to guess. “What do you think would happen? For me, it was everything.” He lets go of Martin’s arm, instead bringing it up to rest on the back of his neck. Not pushing, not quite.

Martin tries to crane around to look at him, but Mike gently nudges his head back the other way, so instead he looks out, over the edge. Down towards the distant firefly lights of the village below, a faint and waning yellow, and up towards the tiny silver points of the stars, so far off that the distance, written out fully, wouldn’t fit a scientist’s whiteboard.

“This,” he says, uncertainly. “Isn’t what I meant.”

“Not today, then,” Mike says. He lets him go, moves aside so that Martin can step away from the edge, though he snatches at Martin’s wrist as he passes, fingers sliding up under his sleeve. “Maybe once these have run their course.”

Martin shivers, and he knows that this time, Mike can’t have missed it.

“Maybe,” he says, because there’s not space in his head to formulate an argument against.

Mike smiles, and there’s a rush through Martin’s stomach that has nothing to do with _Ex Altiora_. It leaves a bitter trail behind it, though.

“I suppose I won’t see you again, then?” he asks. The idea tastes sour on his tongue, despite everything.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Mike says, gestures with his free hand at the tower and everything above and below it. “Every night.” He leans in closer again, and Martin’s brain has a moment of confusion at the height difference, because Mike always seems to have so much more presence to him. He wants to finish crossing the distance, as Mike's hand starts to push his sleeve back, following the progress of his scars.

Instead, Martin flinches back like he’s been struck, as the wind seems to come rushing at him hard from behind Mike, knocking him a stumbling step away, and then the tower, the night sky, all of it, is gone.

* * *

The wind is still there when he wakes. It’s a wild, sharp thing that cuts at Martin's face and tries to slice the skin under his clothes, tearing at them with an anger he wished he’d done nothing to deserve. It attacks with no set direction, sending him staggering first a few paces one way, and then another, his feet catching at rough turf and gorse.

It's not London. He knows that even before he looks up to sees the sky stretching far and low over his head. It’s almost like one at the top of the tower, but the landscape here seems to have spread to match it, rising up into pinched hills, rocks spilling over at the tops of them as though the grass can't keep its grip on them any longer, and then dipping down again like a storm-sea.

Already shivering, Martin immediately turns his back on what seems to be the higher ground, trying to pick a direction that might take him out of the wind. He doubts he’ll survive long in it otherwise – at least he’s wearing something other than his pyjamas this time, but he thinks that has more to do with falling asleep fully clothed on his sofa than any level of preparedness from his sleepwalking self. But even city shoes are better than nothing, against the thorns and stones, and he manages to trip his way down and along, hunching against the worst of the weather, until he comes across something that looks like a small car park. The only thing in it is a food truck, the front still closed. A glance at Martin's watch, dug out again since his abduction, shows him that it's not yet eight, but as he gets closer, he notices someone standing on the other side of it, trying to fix a sign there listing the prices of pasties and burgers.

"Sorry," Martin says, though the word is garbled and cut through by his chattering teeth. "Excuse me."

The person – a young woman – turns, customer service-type smile already prepared, as though she’s functioning an autopilot and is about to ask him what she can get for him. The whole expression falls as she catches sight of him.

“Hello,” she says, slowly, settling on a frown. He supposes he doesn’t look like her normal clientele, no proper walking boots or fleece or layers.

"I... I was just wondering where I am?" There's no way to make the question less plaintive, less ludicrous.

The woman blinks, for a second, computing the question internally. Maybe she’s never heard it before, is finding the whole situation as weird as he is. Maybe weirder.

"Stag night, was it?" she asks.

"Um," Martin says. He settles for a sheepish smile that he can't hold for shivering. It's easier, he supposes, to let her assume that than to try and explain that he's taken to sleepwalking to high places in his sleep. "Last thing I remember is London."

She snorts. "You're in for a shock, then," she says. "This is Dartmoor."

"Oh." Martin blinks, and tries to reconcile that with his still sleep-confused head. "Um."

"Did you wake up out there?" she asks, tone saturated with incredulity.

"Yeah," Martin says. “It… it was somewhere sheltered.” It hadn’t been, it’s a wonder he doesn’t already have hypothermia.

Her frown deepens. "You might want to tell the rest of your party," she says. "That that's how people die of exposure. Come in the van for a minute, warm up out of the wind."

"Right," Martin says. "Um. Thanks."

She moves around to hold the door open for him, though he’s not sure if it’s an indication of how fragile he looks or just her being polite. The temperature contrast is so great that it almost feels like a greenhouse inside – he tries to settle himself out of the way against the corner of a fridge, as she continues to set up for the day.

"Hope it was a good night," she comments, digging a bag out from under her counter.

"I don't really remember," Martin says. He does. His face is probably already flushed from the cold – there’s no reason why it should show it, when he thinks about that last moment in the dream, thinking that Mike would kiss him.

She lets out a short huffing sound, and starts counting the pasties out into the display. When she reaches the bottom of her bag, she hesitates, and then offers it to him.

"Oh," Martin says. "I can't, um-"

"Take it and warm up," she says. "You can give us a good review on tripadvisor."

He’s too cold to argue – he takes the food and the card that she flaps at him, and starts to dig through his phone, wondering how much it's going to cost him to get back to London.

* * *

When he gets back to the Institute, five hours and more than one cashpoint later, it’s Melanie who meets him. She moves to intercept him the second he walks into the Archives, reaching for his arm in an effort to steer him away from Jon’s office.

Not in there,” she says, firmly. Doesn’t pursue it, when he moves out of her reach.

“What?” he echoes. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Your monster’s here,” she says. “He’s in there. Talking to Jon. Jon texted, asked me to keep you out of the way.”

“You mean Mike?” Martin moves around her, leaning towards the door, trying to get a glimpse through. “Talking to Jon? You’re sure they’re _talking_?”

“You’re on first-name terms?” Melanie sighs, throws up her hands, turning her back. “No screaming yet. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

As she heads away, muttering something about finding Basira, Martin rests a hand carefully against the door, and then pushes it in, ever so slightly, so that he can see through the crack into the room beyond.

Mike’s in there, his back to the door, facing Jon’s desk. Jon’s sitting opposite – just sitting. He’s not clutching onto his paperwork for dear life or swaying dangerously in his chair, so Mike probably isn’t doing anything more than talking. That probably means that Jon is just sticking to words, too, because if he had attacked Mike, then Martin’s sure Mike would have attacked him right back.

“I’m not sure what you’re finding so difficult to understand," Jon growls. He's grim-faced, jaw tight and angry, the worm scars standing out on his face. "No."

"Just tell him I'm here," Mike says. "That's all I'm asking. I won't go after you or your hunter friend anymore, just for that. Even if he doesn't want to see me. Just tell him. It's a _good deal_. Martin doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to."

"And I said _no_.” Jon looks like he’s one more repetition away from rising out of his chair. "You kidnapped him. I don't know what makes you think that I would let you anywhere near him."

"You don’t have to," Mike insists. “Just give him the choice."

“Give me the choice to what?” Martin pushes the rest of the way through the door, and steps inside. Mike turns, and there’s a moment where each of them seems to have the opposite reaction to the other – Mike’s expression, flat and stubborn, abruptly brightens, just as Jon’s face falls, hard.

"I thought I told Melanie to-"

"She said." Martin moves the rest of the way into the room letting the door swing closed behind him, and stops in front of Mike. "You'll give up any plans to hurt Jon or Daisy?"

"It's done," Mike says. "I'd. I'd like to talk to you some more, about. Everything. But it's your decision. If you don't want me to... well, I'll do what’s in my power to make sure you never see me again."

" _Martin_ ," Jon says, pushing himself to his feet, and striding around to join the discussion. "Don't, he's not-"

"I have done nothing but tell the truth to you, Archivist," Mike says, and Martin can almost hear the effort he’s putting into keeping it level. "I can't lie to you. I might be a monster. I’m not the only one. But I won’t hurt him." He turns his face back to Martin, seems to dismiss Jon entirely, his piece said. "I'd like to talk. It's your decision. I don't expect an answer from you now." He roots about in his pocket, as though looking for something, but presumably doesn't find it - instead, he shoulders past Jon, and snatches a pen and scrap of paper from his desk, ignoring Jon's irritated noise and the deepening colour of his face. He scribbles out a sequence of numbers, then holds the paper out to Martin. "You can call me. I can see I've outstayed my welcome here-"

"You didn't have any welcome," Jon mutters.

“–So I’ll be on my way,” Mike finishes. He steps around Martin, then pauses, hand ghosting towards Martin’s, as though he wants to check if the scars are there in the waking world. Martin glances at Jon, and pulls it back, out of his reach. Can’t help but feel like it’s performative.

Mike just gives him a tight, wintry smile, and then he walks away.

There’s a tight knot in Martin’s chest telling him to go after him. He takes a step in that direction, but then Jon is in front of him, blocking him in.

“Martin,” he says, reaching for the number in Martin’s hand. Martin tightens his grip on it, but he needn’t have worried – Jon can’t reach across the distance. “Don’t meet with him. He’s dangerous – he’s a _monster_ \- I know you’ve read the statements. Maybe he didn’t hurt you before, but–”

“You asked him, didn’t you?”

“He said he wouldn’t,” Jon admits. “But, even if we could be sure if that just means he doesn’t mean to now but he might change his mind later, he doesn’t necessarily mean what we think he does. And if he _is_ telling the truth then you have no obligation to do anything. I’d frankly prefer to have one fewer monster on our list of things to deal with.”

"Don't worry about it," Martin says.

"Right," Jon says, with a smile that Martin knows means he's assumed that that means Martin's taking his advice. "Good. You're late."

"Yeah," Martin says, with a grimace. "I got... a bit tied up in traffic." The roads had been fairly clear from Dartmoor, but there had been a lot of them. "I did text."

"You did." Jon pats at Martin's arm, and Martin tries not to tense, as Jon's hand rests against the place where his scars lie, the physical proof of his secrets. "I'm glad it _was_ you, though." 

Martin smiles and pulls away, moves around Jon towards the door and his own desk. The statement is still locked in that bottom drawer, he remembers. Maybe Mike would want to see it.

"Me too," he says. He's not sure if it means the same thing that it had, before, but he supposes that that's true of anyone. Jon follows him out of the office, so Martin waits until he’s turned away before he starts to program Mike's number into his phone, and fires his agreement off into the ether, before he drops the slip of paper into the recycling bin, where Jon’s allowed to see it.

* * *

Martin's not entirely sure how they ended up in his flat. He'd arranged for a park, not far from the Institute, but the heavens had opened, and he's still not quite felt warm since Dartmoor, so he'd phoned Mike trying to sort out an alternate, and somehow, they'd ended up agreeing that his was the best place for it.

He supposes that it's not the first time he's had a monster to visit, but it's still a moment of bright confusion, when he opens the door and lets Mike in, and busies himself making the tea, while Mike hangs his coat and scarf up on the wall. The shirt he's wearing underneath is open at the top, and Martin finds himself holding Mike's tea mug a little too long, following the lines of the scar down.

"You can touch it if you want," Mike says, unconcerned, and Martin nearly jumps hard enough to slop the hot liquid over his hands. He pulls the mug gently from Martin’s grip, and then takes a seat on his sofa. Martin hesitates, considering his options, before he settles down next to him.

"What's this about, then?" he asks, once they’re both down to half a mug remaining. Mike hadn't been willing to talk about it over the phone, had responded to all of Martin’s inquiring texts with a promise to discuss it later.

"I need the book," Mike says, simply, then raises a hand. "I know. You don't have it, it was destroyed. But I still need it. Ever since... ever since I woke up, I've not been… quite myself. I can still feel the Vast, I know it's there, but I can't quite... do everything that I could. I think it's because I was underground for so long. Because I was dead."

"Right," Martin says, but Mike shakes his head, refusing to accept even that level of understanding.

"I'm vulnerable," he says. "I wasn't planning on leaving you in my flat like that, but I saw that your Archivist and that hunter were there and... I couldn't guarantee that I'd survive the encounter. I can't... I'm not as effective, as I was. There's bits missing. And I think that I need... a refresher, I suppose."

"I see," Martin says, slowly, because he's not sure that he does. "And, what makes you think I can help you?"

"You said the... the _bin_ , seemed to have an effect on you?" Mike says. "And this-" he reaches for Martin's arm, tracking the progress of the scars that have almost reached to Martin's shoulder now. "This doesn't happen from reading it. This happens from... Well, after I sealed my monster in the book, there was a new illustration in there. And it was these."

"So, what, you think I'm _Ex Altiora_ now?"

"Not exactly," Mike says. "I think the power of it, the story, latched onto you. You've seen the tower, the village - you're touched by it, and I've been feeling a bit stronger around you. Your presence just feels like the book's, now. I'm surprised your Archivist hasn't noticed it. Or maybe he's just been too polite to say."

Martin coughs, the idea of Jon ever being too polite to comment on something, incompatible with a mouthful of tea, and struggles to stop. Mike watches, waiting.

"What are you thinking, then?" he asks, when he can breathe properly. "You think I can somehow help you get your full range of abilities back?"

Mike nods.

"And what would you do with them then?" Martin prompts, letting his voice sharpen. "Use them to hurt people?"

Mike sighs. "Don't go being sanctimonious with me," he says. "You know who turns up in my dreams, once you've gone? Your Archivist, staffing his little nightmare zoo with innocents who just thought they'd get some closure by telling their stories. I get struck by lightning. I get hunted. I suppose you'd have a better idea than me what the rest of them go through. He's no better than me, but you don't seem to have any moral objections to him."

Martin opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He wants to insist that it's different, that Jon hadn't sought it out, that he has never killed anyone, but he doubts it would be convincing, to him or anyone else.

"Besides," Mike says. "Like I said. Some of them might make it out. All the Vast wants is their fear. It's got little interest in their lives."

"It still ruins them," Martin says.

So does your lot," Mike repeats. "Me, your Archivist, probably you one day, all of us. Look. I'm not going to stop what I have to do to survive, even if I don't get my full abilities back. It's just a matter of effectiveness. If you find the right person, even a little vertigo is enough."

Martin hesitates, staring down into his tea, tips the mug to watch as the surface tilts one way, then the other.

"What do you want from me, then?" Mike says. "If we're negotiating for my being. Do you want me to only take the bad people, whoever those are? Do you want me to stop short of sending them off into the endless sky so that, what, they can eventually find their way to your Institute, and end up there anyway?"

"I don't want anyone getting hurt," Martin mumbles.

“’Course you don’t.” Mike sighs again, leans back into the sofa, empty mug hanging between his knees. “What about things for you?”

“For me?” Martin echoes. “I’m fine, I don’t need–”

"You're not fine," Mike says. "You look like you've not had a restful night since we last parted. I’d be flattered, but…"

"I've been sleepwalking." Martin doesn't mean to tell him anything, certainly not the truth, but he's been keeping it back for so long that it just slips out. "I woke up on Dartmoor. It’s been happening since Artefact Storage."

“No,” Mike says. “You weren’t doing that when you were with me. The floor in the spare rooms creaks. I’d have heard, if you got up. Looks like a partnership could benefit us both.”

"But not anyone else," Martin mutters. Mike closes his eyes for a long moment, and then sets his mug down on Martin’s coffee table, and pushes himself to his feet.

"I guess I'll be going, then," he says, all trace of inflection gone from his voice. "I was going to say that I could help you and your Institute friends, you seem like you could do with a bit more firepower, but if you're not interested-"

 _Your Institute friends_. It’s a quick, sharp jab into places that Mike must know hurt. He should shrug it off, should weigh innocent lives over the others’. But, Sasha had been innocent, and good, and she had been _eradicated_. Tim’s scars had gone so deep that they’d scoured out almost everything that had made him recognisable. Jon tries, and tries, and the world just keeps biting him, and all he wants to do is keep people safe.

“You’d help us?” His voice is small. He doesn’t want it to be heard, half hopes that Mike will just keep walking, but he stops, of course he stops.

“Of course,” Mike says. “If that’s what it takes. You’ve got all the cards here.”

“Then…” Martin closes his eyes hard enough to see stars, and then opens them again. He has to be aware of what he’s doing. Has to understand that he’s weighing suffering, deciding that helping Jon save the world might be worth a few ruined lives. “I’ll help. What do you want me to do?”

Mike turns back – Martin had expected to see a glimmer of victory in his face, a smile, but instead there’s something that’s almost despair. He sits down again, heavily.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I first became myself by reading the book and jumping off a building.” He reaches out, slowly, and takes hold of Martin’s jaw again, tilts his face from side to side, and wipes what Martin supposes must have been a tear from one cheek. “I’m not sure what reading you would entail. You’re not really a written medium.”

"Do you remember any of _Ex Altiora_?" Martin’s voice sways, and he pushes on. "The words - maybe if I read them to you?"

"I can remember all of them," Mike says. "But it's not a short volume, but it's worth a try." He lets go of Martin, and scrounges a pen off the crossword on the coffee table, long abandoned. "We can try a chapter. Got any paper?"

Martin retrieves him a notepad that he hopes isn't Institute issue – and then he sits back, sips his tea, and watches Mike as he writes. He moves the pen across the paper without hesitation. Concentrates, leaving Martin free to watch him without fear of being noticed back. He can see the edges of the scar, branching out against Mike's chest, and he can see a mirror to the scars on his own arm on the hand that Mike is using to write with. He lets himself wonder for a second how they're connected, to imagine the rest of the lines over Mike's body, wonder about mapping them. If they're a match to his own, if that's what this being marked by the book is.

It must have called him to Mike in the first place. He doesn't remember it, but he knows that it must have happened, that there can’t be coincidences here anymore – he’d gone to Epping Forest, and he'd dug Mike out of his grave with his bare hands. He thinks, for a second, that he can almost recall it, the sensation of Mike’s hand gripping his wrist, and a momentary shock of bright blue sky, burning in his head.

Mike finally puts the pen down, and reaches across to offer the pad to Martin. Martin takes it, but as he does, Mike grabs his wrist with his other hand, angling his grip so that the lines from their scars line up, almost matching.

"Like that," he says. Martin tries to imagine it as an electrical conduit, imagines that he can feel the current thrumming between them. It might have been like that in Epping Forest, if either of them had been awake for it. "It feels right, doesn't it?" 

Martin nods, and lowers his head, and begins to read.

There's nothing. He doesn't know what he'd expected, but there's certainly nothing dramatic, no bright spark of light, no nothing. Maybe it was his pronunciation, or the fact that it’s not the whole book, but Mike shakes his head when Martin suggests trying again, so Martin busies himself clearing away the tea things, and trying not to see the disappointment in Mike’s face. 

* * *

There's no change - they try everything that they can think of. Mike writes out everything of _Ex Altiora_ that he remembers, and Martin reads it to him, settled together on Martin's tiny sofa, but it doesn’t do anything. They've tried in high places, Martin's even tried to memorise as many of the words as he can, so that he can recite them in their shared dreams, atop the tower, but, though he always feels a spark as he reads them, he can't be sure that that has anything to do with the words or the book or anything at all except the way that Mike looks at him, touches him, when he says them.

The Lichtenberg scars creep higher still up Martin's arm, start to spread out across his chest. They're a mirror to Mike's in every way, and he wonders if he should start wearing scarves now, before he actually has something on his neck he needs to hide. He can't tell Jon about them. He’s too busy, struggling to prepare for the Unknowing as the day draws close and closer. He doesn’t need one more thing to fret about.

It's still odd, getting back from work, and finding Mike standing in front of his bookshelf, scrutinising the handful of books that he owns.

"See anything you like?" Martin asks, as he sets his bag down, and turns to lock the door behind him. He's sure he's in less danger with Mike there, but it's a habit that he doesn't want to rid himself of just because he happens to be cohabiting with a monster, most days.

"Not really," Mike says. He picks out one of Martin's poetry anthologies, holding it at arms' length, like it’s mouldy. It might well be – it's a ratty old paperback that Martin had found in a charity shop, and it looks it. "This is no way to read, Martin."

"What would you suggest?" Martin moves towards the kettle, only to find that there's already a mug from Mike waiting there. He picks it up and takes a sip - Mike's got the right amount of sugar this time, though Martin had never really said anything.

"Well," Mike says. "It's just throwaway, isn't it?"

"They're some of the most well-renowned poets in the English language," Martin protests, but Mike's already shaking his head, gesturing Martin over to the sofa.

"Sit," he says. Martin does as he's told, and Mike takes the place alongside him, then waves the book under his nose. "Look at it. How long do you think they spent designing the cover for this? Ten minutes? Their obligatory classics line, so they can leave the cover mostly blank and think it's tasteful."

"You'd have to ask Tim," Martin says. "He used to work in publishing." Then he remembers that Mike's a monster, and that Tim wouldn't approve at all, but Mike probably won’t take it literally.

Mike flaps the book so that the pages flutter, and makes a disgusted noise. "Poetry," he says. "Should be in a binding befitting it."

Martin thinks briefly his own scruffy notebook – probably appropriate – and hopes that Mike never comes across it.

"I didn't think you'd have any interest in that sort of thing," Martin says. "Let alone be a book snob."

Mike huffs. "I don't spend twenty-four hours a day in service of the great void," he says. "There have to be hobbies. Jobs – I don’t live entirely on handouts from Simon Fairchild. I spent over half my life before _Ex Altiora_ looking for Leitners. I don't know what makes you think I could have managed that without having some appreciation for literature."

“They’re usually labelled–” Martin starts, but Mike hasn’t finished.

"And, _book snob_?" he echoes. "How about I bring you some proper editions of these poems, and then you'll see. Not that this is the best setting for them, but we can always go up to the roof."

"It's staff only," Martin says, without thinking.

Mike raises an eyebrow at him.

"I'm not having you freefall the maintenance workers."

Mike sighs, and puts the book down on the table, next to Martin's tea.

"Besides," Martin says. "I'm not sure it's the setting that matters so much as the words?"

"Of course you'd think that," Mike mutters to himself. "I’ll show you."

* * *

Mike insists on coming with him to the Institute, a few days later – wants to see the bin, now, so he can get a better idea of how it might have happened, and Martin with no other solutions to offer him, barely protests. Especially not when Mike had been right – he does sleep better with him there, never leaves his bed, except in the dreams.

He hopes, for the whole of the tube journey that Jon will be out, somehow, off doing surveillance with Tim or something, but that hope is dashed like a bottle-ship in a storm-sea, the second that he walks into the Archives.

Jon is rummaging along the surface of Martin’s desk, looking for something, and he straightens up as Martin enters, turning.

“Martin,” he says. “I was looking for – what’s he doing here?”

It’s not as angry as Martin had thought it would be. Just tired. Jon’s face is a map of exhaustion.

“Mike and I are–” Martin is cut off by a surge of dizziness so strong it nearly bowls him off his feet. Mike catches his arm, and sets him back upright, shooting Jon a glare as Martin shakes his head in an effort to clear it.

"Don't compel him, Archivist," he says. "It's rude." 

Jon’s shoulders slump even further, but he focusses all his attention on Martin as he replies, blocking Mike out.

“I’m – sorry,” he manages. I didn’t realise, I just wasn’t expecting..."

"No," Martin says. "It's fine, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but – I've been working with Mike. We... we have to check something in artefact storage, but I'll tell you everything afterwards, all right?"

"Fine," Jon says. Martin can tell from his tone of voice that it isn't, not at all, but he lets them go without saying anything else.

* * *

The bin looks different from how Martin remembers it. Still empty, still round, still metal, but so far away from the picture of it that he’d built up in his head, where it still had the potential to be a repository of an endless void. But he doesn’t even get that vertigo feeling when he tells himself he should, tries to imagine it into his head.

“Is this it?” Mike doesn’t sound particularly impressed. Martin supposes he can understand that – it’s not like the effort required to get Sonja to let him visit something he’d had an incident with would have seemed all that considerable to him.

“That’s the one,” Martin says. “We don’t have many bins in Artefact Storage.”

Mike scrutinises another moment longer, and then shakes his head.

"Nothing left in there," he says. "I'm not getting anything from it at all." He gives Martin's forehead a light tap. "Must have all ended up in there."

"Must have," Martin echoes. "A wasted journey, then."

Mike shrugs, and turns his back, ready to head back up and out of the Institute. "Probably just means I've already got everything I need," he says. "But you can at least tell your friends they don’t need to bother with this one anymore. Want me to go back to the flat? I don't imagine your Archivist is going to want me lurking."

"No," Martin says. "Probably not."

* * *

Jon has barely moved, by the time Martin gets back. He's sitting at Tim’s desk, with almost the same look on his face that Martin had left him with – if anything, it’s darker now, like his mood has been deepening and deepening with every second he’s been alone.

"Martin," he says, so quietly that Martin almost doesn't recognise his voice. "Please tell me what you're doing."

Martin hesitates. It would be a lie, if he did. Neither he nor Mike knows what they’re doing. All he can do is try to explain. It’s the only fair thing to do.

"There was an incident," he says. "In Artefact Storage. While you were in China. You can ask Sonja about it, if you want. There was a... an object. It was of the Vast, I ended up coming into contact with it, and then I stopped sleeping properly." He starts to pick at his sleeve, knowing he’ll have to pull it back, if he’s to have any hope of making Jon see."I was sleepwalking - I woke up on the roof of my building. That day I was late? Dartmoor. There didn't seem to be anything I could do to stop it. And then... then Mike. It’s not like that while he’s there. We’re… connected, he thinks. He says he needs my help to get his full powers back, but he doesn't know how, exactly, so we're just. Trying things."

"Martin, you do know he's killed a lot of people, don't you?" Jon's trying to be careful. Trying not to yell. Martin can hear the restraint, and it takes all his self-control not to sit on his hands, keep everything hidden just a little bit longer.

"I know," Martin says. "But... so has Daisy. And we need all the friends we can get right now, can't we?"

“Daisy kills _monsters_ ,” Jon says, slowly.

“You’re not a monster,” Martin protests. He wants to go on, wants to insist that Jon’s one of the most painfully human people he knows. Instead, he just rolls his sleeve up halfway down his forearm, and holds it out.

"I've been getting these," he says. "I don’t think I’m as human as I used to be, either. But I’m no more a monster yet than you are.”

Jon sighs. Too tired to fight it, Martin can tell, and not out of actual acceptance.

"You should have come to me."

"You were busy," Martin says. "Or out of the country. Or both. And now, with the Unknowing…"

"I wouldn’t have been too busy for you,” Jon growls. “Martin… I know I can’t stop this, it’s not for me to tell you what to do, but just, promise me you’ll be careful. I know you can’t be safe, none of us are going to be safe, but… I’d like you to try.”

“I think we’re all safer with Mike on our side,” Martin says.

Jon makes a vaguely dissenting noise, and stares down at Tim’s unkempt paperwork.

“I hope so,” he says. 

* * *

The sky around the tower is an endless, near-painful blue again. Martin had been hoping it would be, had taken an early night that he’d told himself was because Tim said the Unknowing was likely to be sooner rather than later, so he’d need his sleep, but was likely more a need to get here, to the peace of the heights.

Martin stares out at it all, until he feels Mike's touch on his arm, and turns back. Mike considers the sky, too, and for a moment it seems like there's nothing else in his eyes, so much brighter for reflecting that shade. Then they land on Martin, and he smiles. It's still a little remote – Mike probably always will be – but he has his pick of monsters.

He wonders how many more shades he’ll see the sky, here, before it happens. He doesn’t think Elias will kill him – that’s a worry he reserves for Jon and the others. Elias is going to torture him, and he’s made his peace with that, as far as he can. It had been his idea, after all. But Elias will see this place, if he looks. Martin doubts he’d be able to take it all in – the Eye simply cannot open wide enough – but he worries that it’ll never feel quite right again. Not if Elias intrudes upon it.

Beyond that, he wonders if one day, it might just fade on its own. He has no intention of feeding the Vast, or of leaving the Institute. Perhaps its mark on him will fade in favour of another, and Mike will be alone here – or maybe just in Jon’s dreams, then, a parade of horrors with the other statement givers.

“Did you get the books?” Mike asks.

“Yeah,” Martin says. They’d been waiting for him, back at the flat, a small stack of hardbacks that he’d winced at trying to guess the price of. Wants to ask Mike what his job actually is, or just how considerable the allowance from Fairchild is, but he feels at this stage like it would be tacky, unimportant.

"Have you looked at them?"

"No." Martin shoots Mike a confused glance. "I was waiting for you."

Mike blinks. "They'll probably have the same writing in them whether I'm there or not."

"Wouldn’t quite say the same things, though," Martin says. He lapses back into quiet, and Mike lets him.

After a minute, he picks his way to the edge, and peers down, vaguely aware of Mike following behind him. He knows what he’ll see down there – the village. If he looks out, the horizon, where a monster will, one day, approach from. He feels like he can feel it already, its footsteps threatening to shake every part of this landscape apart.

He hasn’t asked Mike about the monster. If it’s metaphor or fact of if Mike just doesn’t know.

“Is there something else?” he finds himself saying, instead. 

“Something else?”

Martin gestures out at the village, the forest, the cliffs.

"I know this is _Ex Altiora_ ," he says. "But the Vast – there must be more of it."

"’Course,” Mike says – he sits, and pats the floor next to him, indicating that Martin should join him. When he does, Mike pulls him down, half into his lap, so that he’s staring upwards, into the sky.

"My corner of it," he says. "Has always been the sky. Falling. That's me. But… the universe is immense, Martin. I like to think there are other places I could go if I ever cared to, and maybe one day I will. Simon Fairchild's talked to me about the ocean and space and landscapes that we probably wouldn’t have words for. We could go and see them one day, if you like. Though probably best not to tell Simon. I don't know what he'd make of you, and while as far as I'm aware he's not on bad terms with the Institute, I don't really pay too much attention to the politics."

Martin blinks, and his gaze wavers from the sky towards the lines of Mike’s scar that curl up towards the underside of his jaw. He wants to touch them, but he feels like he can’t cross that barrier, even this close. He turns his attention back, lets the blue above dizzy him for a moment.

"I've been across the sea, of course," Mike says. "I don't remember all of the details, but I took the ferry to France. I thought about flying - lot of acrophobes." He pauses, seems to remember that Martin doesn't necessarily want to hear about that, and changes tack. "But that just seemed a bit predictable, and I wanted to see what I could manage. And it's a whole different feeling, just being out on the ocean. Nothing but water on either side, far as the eye can see. And the sensation when the sea starts to turn on you? It doesn't know you're there and it doesn't care. You could row out alone in there, and if you go in exactly the wrong direction, you might never see land again. I know Lukas has his corner in it, but ever since that trip, I always felt like it was a bit more our territory than his."

Martin lies there, and listens to him talk, letting Mike's voice ease him. There’s more to see. Even if Elias takes this place, they might find another. And Mike not understand the importance of having someone else read poetry, now but when he talks to Martin of what he loves there's a force to his voice that makes Martin think that he might, one day. He just has to find the right way of telling him. If he gets the time.

* * *

They meet, for the last time, before the Unknowing. One last conversation, to make sure they all understand their roles, though they spend most of it in silence, everything already said. Jon, Tim, Basira and Daisy, off to save the world, Jon worried, Tim snarling, Basira quiet, and Daisy resolute. Martin and Melanie, staying behind to try and make them a better future when (when, it has to be when, Martin won't condone any ifs, even in the temporary privacy of his own head) they get back. No more Elias, looming over them, holding information as a pipe to beat them with, when they won’t do as they’re told.

On the side of the Unknowing, the tickets are bought, hotel rooms booked. On the Elias one, Martin has tried not to make a mental list of all the things that Elias could drag through his head, but couldn't help it, in the end. Has his own macabre top five. Wonders if he'll be right, if Elias will look in and see what he's come up with and go with something else just to spite him.

One last go-through, and then Jon will pass around his tape recorder, and they'll all pour into it the last part of themselves that they want to be known. Martin doesn't think it's something he'll ever want to listen to. He doesn't want to hear who says what. Wants to remember them as he knows they are or were once, and not let anything interfere with that.

“Martin,” Jon says, and he’s got that tone of voice again. Martin’s heard it enough in these past few days that he almost never wants to hear it again. “Are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

“It’s a bit too late to back out now, isn’t it?” he says.

“No,” Jon says. “Martin, he’s going to torture you.”

“I’m aware,” Martin says. “But someone has to do it. And this’ll work, Jon.”

“We could still just kill him,” Melanie mutters, half to herself. Martin doubts she cares whether or not any of them overhear.

“We’re not changing any of the plans now,” Basira says.

“I’m doing it,” Martin adds.

Jon nods, weary, but Martin’s distracted from trying to think of something to counter him with by a faint noise from somewhere behind him. Martin frowns, peering around, but all he can make out is a faint whisk of motion, a coat, perhaps, as someone ducks out of sight behind the tunnel walls.

Probably Tim, who had skulked out halfway through, without a word. It had looked familiar.

“Right,” Jon says. “If you’re sure. That’s settled.”

It had already been settled. Martin knows that. They all do.

He takes his turn with Jon’s recorder, and regrets half the words he says on it.

* * *

The flat feels physically colder, when he gets back to it. Martin knows why, almost before he’s locked the door – Mike's coat is hanging on the peg by the door. Familiar, just as it had been down in the tunnels, when Martin had been concentrating too hard on assuring everyone he’d be able to play his part to remember.

Mike had been listening. He’d heard what they were planning.

"Mike!" he calls, trying to keep the edge of fear out of his voice. It’s not rational, Mike won’t be gone because his coat’s there, unless he’d left without his coat, which isn’t impossible…

Mike is sprawled out on the sofa like the conventional ways of sitting are out of fashion. He glares up at Martin the second that he appears, jaw tight.

“So,” he says. “The plan for the Unknowing. You’re not going at all. You’re just going to let a monster into your head.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Martin says. He wrestles himself out of his own coat, flinging it sideways in the vague direction of its peg. It barley goes half a metre. “So polite of you to listen in.”

Mike gives a short, humourless laugh.

"Well, was I supposed to do?" he demands. "You've not told me anything about it. And for the record, I didn't mean to overhear. You'd have just gone off into that without consulting me?"

"What business is it of yours?" Martin grits his teeth and stoops to pick his coat up, circles around to drop it on top of the coffee table instead. "Elias isn't going to kill me, so-"

"You don't _think_ he's going to kill you," Mike corrects him. It's the sharpest Martin's ever heard him speak, every word pointed. "You don't know that. You told me he killed Jurgen Leitner, what's to stop him doing the same to you? The hassle of hiring a new employee? The fact that your Archivist is fond of you? I hate to break it to you but he's not exactly lacking for hostages in that department."

"Elias won't kill me because something might happen to Jon," Martin says. "And then he'll need a new Archivist."

"And that's supposed to be you?" Mike pushes himself to his feet, moves to grab Martin's wrist, where the Lichtenberg scars had started. Martin tries to wrench it back, but Mike is faster, stronger. "In case you hadn't noticed, Martin, you don't exactly belong to the Beholding any longer."

"Oh," Martin says, his lip curling. "I'm sorry. I lost a fight with a bin. I forgot. Shouldn't have, not when all you care about is getting your full abilities back so you can-"

Mike kisses him. It's hard and angry and not at all what Martin would have expected. He yanks Martin down into it hard so hard that he nearly stumbles, and makes no effort to catch him. It's rough, a sharpness of teeth that's almost akin to the way it feels when Mike touches his scars, a memory of electricity that had never struck him.

And then Martin is falling – he tries, for a second, to orient himself, but his mind's eye is swamped by the blue from all directions and he lets out a shout that Mike swallows. It’s more than vertigo, more than sensation – he _is_ in freefall, the wind battering at his senses and his heart and brain singing with adrenalin.

"I've had my powers back for days," Mike hisses against his mouth. “I think it was just the proximity.”

"What?" Martin mumbles, dazed, as Mike's sky withdraws from his head, resisting the urge to plead for it back. "Why wouldn't you..."

"I wanted to spend more time with you," Mike growls. He pulls Martin down again, and Martin lets himself be moved. He kisses Mike back, his hands going to tug at Mike's shirt, trying to let him see the lines of the scar that he's been tracing in his head for so long, while all that blue is still burned into his eyelids.

He's left dizzy a second later as Mike pulls back far enough to get a hold of him, and drags him towards the sofa. It's not much of a push, barely enough to even make him light-headed, nothing like the stumbling vertigo that Mike had first afflicted him with, just enough that he knows to go where Mike wants him to. He’ll do that now. The morning is a different matter.

Mike pushes him down, and starts to pull at Martin's jumper. He wrenches it over his head without too much trouble, but leaves him to free his own sleeve-tangled arms in favour of kissing him again, tongue and teeth and want.

Martin drags his jumper the rest of the way off, and reaches up to finish unbuttoning Mike’s shirt. He stops, then, tracing the branching, spiralling pathways of his scar, faintly aware of Mike’s fingers doing the same.

Their clothes end up on the floor, somewhere between the kisses and the groping. The sex is angry, a tight restraint plain in every one of Mike’s touches – he yanks Martin’s hair to pull his head back, exposing Martin’s throat for his teeth, fills Martin’s brain with static every time he tries to sit up. Martin is angry right back, knows that Mike knows he won’t change his plans – the kisses turn desperate, towards the end, a need to make him understand.

Martin does.

Afterwards, they lie together, Mike with his forehead resting against Martin’s collarbone, where the edges of his scar are just starting to creep up. Martin wraps an arm around him, trying to keep them both in place, for just a little while longer.

They’ll dream, he thinks, he hopes, and wonders if this last time, he’ll step off the edge.

* * *

The morning brings the commute. Martin gets up, to find Mike already gone. He’s not surprised – their argument hadn’t really resolved, just been postponed, and Mike probably doesn’t know what to say to someone about to march off to torture.

He showers and dresses in a strange, numb state, half wondering what Elias will make of the bruises along his neck, and knowing that he doesn't care. That’s not why he takes Mike's scarf, left on the peg by Martin’s door. It'll be no barrier to Elias' eyes, not if he bothers to look. Perhaps, today, he will. But it makes Martin feel better, to remember that Mike is out there, somewhere, and that afterwards, he still will be.

* * *

Around a hundred miles to the northeast, a man with Lichtenberg scars walks into the Unknowing.


End file.
